Westminster
by-elections, 23 January 1986

The Anglo-Irish Agreement,
signed by Margaret Thatcher and Garret Fitzgerald at Hillsborough Castle on
15 November 1985, gave the Irish government a formal consultative role in the
running of Northern Ireland. For Unionists, this was the worst political blow
since the destruction of the Stormont regime in 1972. Devolved government in
1974 had foundered on the rocks of the "Irish dimension"; now they had the Irish
dimension but no devolved government to sweeten the pill. Massive demonstrations
were called and all fifteen Unionist MPs resigned their seats to enable their
electorate to express their disapproval of the Agreement.

Under these circumstances,
the non-Unionist parties were not enthusiastic to add credibility to what were
dubbed the "bogus by-elections". Although Alliance advised its local associations
to fight each seat, many declined to select a candidate. The SDLP and Sinn Fein
stood only in the four Unionist-held constituencies with Nationalist majorities.
The Workers Party filled in a couple of gaps, but in four constituencies where
nobody could be bothered to stand against a safe Unionist MP, a paper candidate
had to be found in order for a vote to take place. A Mr Wesley Robert Williamson
made his contribution to electoral history by changing his name to Peter Barry
(the name of the Irish Foreign Minister) and standing on the label "For the
Anglo-Irish Agreement". Despite not campaigning at all, he saved his deposit
in three of the four seats.

I myself was lodging with
a prominent Unionist family in Armagh at the time, while working at the Observatory
there. I was on the electoral register in Upper Bann, a few miles away, but
faced with the unexciting choice of the UUP or the Workers Party decided not
to disrupt my work schedule, such as it was, for the sake of exercising my vote.
Oddly enough the Newry and Armagh constituency provided the one interesting
result of the election as the SDLP's Seamus Mallon unseated UUP man Jim Nicholson.
There and elsewhere the SDLP made substantial gains against Sinn Fein which
were not really reversed until 2001.